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Second Issue Drops Sees August 2018 Comic Sales Dip Over 336K

August 2018 had 6,571,798 units in the top 300 comics list, an decrease of 361,651 units from last month. Only three comics sold over 100,000 including Fantastic Four #1 which sold 369,914 units. Infinity Wars #1 kicked off that Marvel event with 104,363 units. While those are strong sales for a normal title, many past Marvel event titles have sold much better.

Only the top ten comics sold over 75,000 units. The total for the top 300 comics is only slightly below the 6,637,221 unit average since Diamond first started reporting final order in early 2003. About two-thirds of the net loss in sales this month came from DC titles with the other third of it being spread across 15 other publishers.

Marvel Comics placed 3,201,184 units in the top 300 comics and was up 70,153 units in the top 300 compared to last month and accounted for 48.52% of the total units for the top 300 comics.

DC Comics placed 2,134,711 units in the top 300 comics and was down 332,221 units in the top 300 compared to last month and accounted for 32.36% of the total units for the top 300 comics.

Image Comics placed 533,542 units in the top 300 comics and was down 82,354 units in the top 300 compared to last month and accounted for 8.09% of the total units for the top 300 comics.

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The premiere publishers accounted for 96.99% of the units in the top 300 comics this month while all of the other publishers with items in the top 300 accounted for 3.01% of the units.

The up-swing of 2,121,655 units from new and increased sales was enough to compensate for the down-swing of -2,458,033 units from lost sales. New titles more than compensated for the drop in sales on existing titles. Suspended and defunct titles results in much larger loss of sales than the units gained from returning titles.

Weapon H and Venom both had strong gains. Weapon H #6 was up 68.46% with a J Scott Campbell Return of the Fantastic Four open-to-order cover and Captain America guest starring. Venom #5 was up 10.26% with a Zaffino Return of the Fantastic Four open-to-order cover. The first four issues of Venom had reorder activity in the top 300 which totaled to 28,518 units combined.

The continuing titles which shipped more issues category added 114,195 units compared to last month.

All of the titles in this category shipped two issues in August and only one in July. Most of these titles were from Marvel. Shipping twice as many issues is a good way to roughly double the sales of a title in a given month.